Navigating the unforgiving Yukon trail, where the cold and dangerous conditions will make each step harder and harder as you traverse through. In Jack London’s “To Build a Fire” written in 1908, an unnamed man travels through the frigid Yukon Trail with his dog. Despite the warnings about the cold, the man underestimates the severity of the nature around him and embarks on his expedition alone with his dog. The man's journey will ultimately end poorly for him, and the ignorance in his decisions will cost him his life. London conveys in his writing that facing severe conditions in nature, one must swallow their own pride and oblige to the warnings of nature in order to ensure their own survival. This man's arrogance and his disregard towards …show more content…
London writes, “He took pride in his ability to endure cold and to move swiftly in the face of danger.” This illustrates the man's confidence in skills that don’t apply to his current situation. London 5) London employs foreshadowing in this instance when he describes how the man's confidence and skills did not apply to his current situation. Because his faith in his abilities did not help the man, his overconfidence was a main contributor to his demise. The man also had a very dismissive and arrogant attitude because he thought the cold posed very little threat to him and his journey. When the man was on the edge of survival, he was willing to do whatever it takes to survive. This is shown when London writes, “The sight of the dog puts a wild idea into his head. He remembered the tale of the man, caught in a blizzard, who killed a steer and crawled inside the carcass, and so was saved. He would kill the dog and bury his hands in the warm body until the numbness went out of them.” London exemplifies the man's desperation by using imagery when he writes, “caught in a blizzard, who killed a steer and crawled inside the carcass” This shows the man’s desperate thoughts and willingness to resort to extreme
In Jack London’s short story, “To Build a Fire,” a man attempts to reach his destination across the Yukon wilderness. The cold and wintery setting is used to create the conflict of whether the man will make it to the campsite and transitions the mood from calm and uncaring to fearful. It also manages to convey the message that overzealousness can lead to failure.
Traveling and going on adventures can be super fun, but it all depends on how you are prepared. Jack London writes a story about a man and his dog, and they go on a journey in fifty below weather. Jack London loved to write about adventure and risks. Will Manley says, “From a literary standpoint, one of the greatest tragedies of the twentieth century was the life and death of Jack London.” (Manley). The man in the story is not well prepared and things do not go very well. He doesn’t have warm clothing and freezed. He didn’t think that well when building a fire and it ended going out. And he didn’t travel with a partner. These are all very dangerous and should be thought about before traveling. There are three important messages to think about when going on a journey in To Build A Fire, by Jack London.
Hello, everyone I chose "To Build a Fire" by Jack London, this is a history about how our mind can deceive us, and sometimes work against us. It has moments of hope, desperation, happiness, and sadness. It's about a man, who decided to travel through the Yukon River in Canada with the old camp on Henderson Creek as his destination.
Nature is the strongest thing in this world that everyone takes for granted. It holds the power to create life, but also destroy in mere seconds. In the modern world, we try to figure out and use nature in a way that can benefit us, but not how we can benefit it. With a constant search for nature and its resources, it causes humans to less mindful of the wilderness around us and how no matter what, at the end, nature will outlive all of us. Humans think they can outsmart nature with their new technology and progress, but we also end up having to turn back to nature for help in order to survive. In Jack London’s story, To Build a Fire, we follow a man into the wilderness
“To Build a Fire” by Jack London is about a man fighting against nature for his life. The story is set on the Yukon Trail in Alaska during a harsh winter. The main character has recently moved to Alaska, so this is his first experience with an Alaskan winter. Throughout the story, the man is traveling on the Yukon in bitter cold and life threatening conditions with no companion other than a dog. The story allows the reader to follow the emotions and thoughts of a man freezing to death. The detailed description of the weather conditions and the main character’s attempts of adapting to his surrounding allow the reader to better understand the dangers the main character endured.
"To Build a Fire" by Jack London is about a man traveling alone in the Yukon. The story follows the old man and a dog that man attempted to hike through the snow.
“To Build a Fire” by Jack London is a short story. The story begins with an unnamed man that is traveling in the Yukon with a dog. It is very cold outside and he shouldn’t travel alone in this weather but he does anyway. He is said to have no imagination and thinks he is invincible. It is so cold that when the man spits it becomes frozen before it hits the ground.
Character development in the story "To Build a Fire" by Jack London One of the most famous and favorite writers of American and world readers is Jack London. His unusual ability to combine adventures with narration and tell the stories of the personal growth of people, developed in severe circumstances, attracts readers' attention worldwide. The present paper is devoted to the discussion of the work To Build a Fire, written by London in 1902, and the way London develops the personality of the principal character during his adventures. Jack London spent a considerable amount of time in the Yukon searching for gold, so this was the period when London was inspired to write his classic story To Build a Fire.
Jack London, the author of To Build a Fire places his unknown man in the harshest climate almost any human could not endure. There are many conflicts that go throughout the story with nature as well as personal conflict of his own. The setting plays an important role in this short story because the way that the author describes when the man’s saliva freezes before it even touches the ground shows the reader that this is not just an everyday travel and this man is about to face a nine hour hike through the snowy world of Yukon, northwestern Canada next to Alaska. This unknown man faces his worst days that laid ahead of him not knowing what's about to happen, how his thought process will start to change, and most importantly how he is affected
However, later in the story, London uses irony to flip the script. The man, who is now wet and shivering, looks at he dog with a sense of jealousy and envy. At the end of the story, when the man reached a state of hypothermia, the dog was left looking at him with eyes of confusion, probably wondering to why the man was just sitting in the
As the man grows fearful and he begins to accept that his attempts to build a fire were of no use, he starts thinking through his options. Having remembered an old tale at the sight of his husky, he decides to kill the animal and defrost his hands inside of it until he is able enough to start a fire. He got a hold of the animal but not long after “he realize[s] that he [can] not kill the dog. There was no way to do it. With his helpless hands he could neither draw nor hold his sheath-knife nor throttle the animal” (London, p. 608).
While the old man represents common sense, the protagonist represents foolishness. Overall, London creates a very unlikeable character. London is putting emphasis on the theme of man versus nature. Nature is
In To Build a Fire, London paints a landscape of coldness and hardship, where man must use extreme caution or be killed by the elements. Despite these brutal conditions, one simple phrase is continually repeated: “It is very cold.” This use of a casual statement when referring to a life threatening condition is an obvious characteristic of naturalist style. Furthermore, the narrator progresses through the narrative with a relative indifference in relation to the events that befall the man in the story. As the man dies freezing, it is described in the text as simply “drowsing off into what seemed to him the most comfortable and satisfying sleep he had ever known.” London obviously placed a great focus on being realistic with matters concerning man’s relationship with the
The man who is in the story, unfortunately put himself into the dangerous situation. He didn’t listen to knowledgeable person’s advice. He advised that “no man should travel alone in that country after 50 below zero. Well, here he was; he had had the accident; he was alone; and he had saved himself” (London, 2016, p.72). And finally he faced his death, “Then the man dropped into what seemed to him the most comfortable and satisfying sleep he had ever known” (London, 2016,
The narrator in this story is omniscient, expressing the thoughts of the protagonists and the dog, these varying viewpoints exemplify the main character’s arrogance. “The animal was depressed by the tremendous cold. It knew that it was no time for traveling. Its instincts told it a truer tale than was told to the man by the man’s judgement.” The man completely disregards the dog’s natural instincts, which are deeply imbued in nature and relies on his